The Kamala Harris playbook has already worked in Britain. But the ‘Special Relationship’ is getting more complicated

By Rob Picheta, CNN

London (CNN) — A former prosecutor takes over a political party in turmoil, promises to turn the page on an era of political chaos, and surges to an election victory that once seemed unthinkable.

It’s the playbook that Vice President Kamala Harris is hoping will take her to the White House. And it has already worked – in Britain, where Labour’s Keir Starmer ended 14 years of Conservative rule in a July election.

The official line from Starmer’s government is unwavering: London will work constructively with whoever wins the presidential contest.

But sources see similarities between Starmer and Harris’ backgrounds, ideologies and paths to power – and several of Starmer’s allies are hoping the strategy that worked for him will help Harris too.

“There are some really striking parallels,” Claire Ainsley, Starmer’s former executive director of policy, told CNN. “The voters that Harris needs to persuade and motivate are very similar to the description of the voters that Labour needed to persuade and motivate.”

Ainsley, who now heads the Project on Center-Left Renewal at the Progressive Policy Institute think tank, presented findings from Labour’s electoral victory to senior Democratic strategists and pollsters in Washington DC last month.

Her trip was part of a wider sharing of information between the two camps that is longstanding – and cuts both ways – but which is irking former President Donald Trump in the final stretches of the campaign. Trump launched an extraordinary spat with Labour on Wednesday, claiming through a lawyer they had been interfering in the election.

Britain is prepared for strains with whoever wins next month’s election, with debates on trade, Ukraine and the future of NATO at the forefront of lawmakers’ minds. “The outcome of the election is going to have a profound influence on Britain, on Britain’s policy in the world, and a whole range of issues that are going to be vital to Britain’s future,” Ed Owen, a former special adviser in the Home Office and Foreign Office, told CNN.

But this week’s spat throws renewed scrutiny on the complicated and delicate “Special Relationship” between Britain and America.

For decades, leaders on each side have gone to great pains to stay out of each others’ politics. As discourse hardens in each country, that unspoken pact is becoming increasingly tenuous.

‘We’re in a different world’

The Trump campaign’s broadside against the Labour Party stunned Westminster this week. Trump, who frequently uses the threat of legal proceedings as a political tool, accused Labour of “blatant foreign interference” in the election, pointing to a campaigning trip taken by a number of the party’s staff to four battleground states. Labour has insisted the trip was taken in the staffers’ own time, at their own expense and didn’t break any rules.

There is irony in the accusation; Trump’s campaign has benefited from the support of notable figures on the British right, including populist figurehead Nigel Farage and former prime minister Liz Truss – whose endorsement breaks with the norm.

“We’re in a very different world from the world we were in 30 years ago,” Truss, who resigned as prime minister after just seven weeks and subsequently lost her seat in Parliament in July, told CNN this week.

Truss said it was “incredibly arrogant of the Labour Party to think that they have anything to offer the American people.”

But exemplifying the blurred lines that political tribalism has introduced to the relationship, she insisted that her own visit to the Republican National Convention – and her outspoken support for Trump – was not arrogant: “Because the Labour Party are wrong, and they’re being an absolute disaster for Britain.”

There are plenty of reasons Democrats may want to learn from Starmer. Both he and Harris have used their past as top prosecutors to talk tougher on crime and immigration than previous center-left figures – and both have targeted traditional working-class voters who feel left out of their countries’ evolving economies.

“Harris has part of the problem that Keir had, which is that he’s an unknown entity,” Josh Simons, a newly-elected Labour MP and the former director of the influential Labour Together think tank, said. “A big part of her strategy is about reassurance: ‘I am not a closet radical.’ And that was obviously true of us during the election.”

“You can see those lessons ping-ponging back and forth between the two countries,” added Josh Freed, senior vice president for Climate at the Washington, DC-based Third Way think tank, who attended Labour’s party conference last month.

Both Starmer and Harris took over parties in peril, at a point where electoral success seemed a distant prospect. But unlike Harris, whose ascension to the top of the Democrat ticket came mere months before the election, Starmer had time; he spent four years steadily reversing Labour’s standing before July’s poll.

And unlike the Democratic flagbearer, Starmer had the luxury of running against an incumbent party that was historically unpopular by the start of this year. “Labour did not win the election this year, the Conservatives lost it,” Truss, a Conservative, argued. “There’s no doubt that the public wanted to give the Conservatives a kicking.”

‘Deep unease’ in Westminster

Westminster is under no illusion that a Labour government would prefer to deal with a Democratic president; the parties are broadly sister groups, and polling consistently shows Trump is deeply unpopular in Britain.

“Their priorities align with ours,” Mike Tapp, a Labour MP who attended the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in August, said of Harris’ campaign. “Being in step is helpful, particularly with the likes of NATO and diplomatic efforts in Israel. You can see that that would be a given with Kamala Harris.”

Among the party’s lawmakers, the prospect of a Trump term invokes emotions from “deep unease” to a “gritty realism about Trump as part of a trend in many developed democracies, towards populists, far-right, in some cases neo-fascist political leadership,” Simons said.

But unlike President Joe Biden, Harris’ political career has not been built around foreign policy. “She’s not an Anglophile in any way, really,” Simons said. “That kind of old, pro-European latent sentiment that exists around Biden and the people around him, I don’t think we can lean on. That forces much more direct confrontation where there are shared interests.”

The confrontation may be more robust with a Trump administration. Most concerningly to London, Trump has demurred on his support for Ukraine as it fights Russia. A drop-off in American backing for Kyiv would mark a sudden severance between British and American foreign policy.

The serious, occasionally dour Starmer is already a stylistic opposite to Trump, too. This week’s spat with Trump’s campaign carries the potential to further complicate relations between the men.

Still, some see opportunity in the unpredictability of a possible second Trump term. Reflecting on his first stint in power, Owen said: “You had this much more dynamic situation, where effectively, things were up for grabs. … You could influence American policy.”

A malleable foreign policy might concern US diplomats, but it creates opportunity for allies, too. “We can handle (Trump’s unpredictability). We can work with him,” Tapp said.

And Britain has instruments in its centuries-old arsenal which could help sweeten the deal with a former president who still talks admiringly of British history, and the late Queen Elizabeth II. “There’s a lot that the UK has to offer that resonates with (Trump),” said Freed. “Having the meeting with the King is a very useful tool for the United Kingdom to use. The pomp and circumstance is very similar.”

But a second Trump term would be a watershed for the West. Many in Britain still wince with memories of the first. “What happened on January 6 (2021) was pretty devastating for the world,” Tapp said.

Germany’s Olaf Scholz and Australia’s Anthony Albanese, meanwhile, face difficult reelection bids next. France’s Emmanuel Macron saw his authority hobbled in July. Should Harris lose, Starmer could become the last centrist in the room.

“The question becomes for Starmer: What does a Trump-led America look like, and what pressure does the UK find itself in to be the leader of global centrism, and global democracy?” Freed said.

“There aren’t many places left with very stable democracies that are led by center-left political parties. It would come down to (Starmer) and to the Labour Party, whether they want it or not.”

Correction: This story has been updated to correct where Claire Ainsley met Democratic strategists and pollsters.

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